Facing the Giants

Matt and I watched Facing the Giants yesterday. We’ve been meaning to watch it for months now, and finally got around to it. I was touched by the movie, and here is where I begin to tell you why…

Let me start by saying that Facing the Giants is NOT my favorite movie…nowhere near it. It is your typical Our-team-sucks-but-watch-us-beat-the-odds kinds of movie that is intended to make you feel good and want to try harder in all you do. It’s a Christian movie as well, and in normal Christian movie fashion, the acting stinks. (Why, oh why can’t we have Christian movies with decent dialogue?) We found ourselves successfully predicting plot points, and laughing at the cheesiness of a lot of the scenes.

So why was I in tears at the end of the movie? Why would I take so much time out of my busy schedule to blog about a movie that isn’t really that good? Because Matt and I have some Giants we’re facing right now.

Life is really stressful for the Swishers these days. We are dealing with situations that make us feel angry and victimized and misunderstood. Satan is weaseling his way into our home like the jerk that he is, and we are feeling afraid and hurt and ready to quit. Our confidence is shattered, and we feel like we’re on-edge frequently.

Our hopes for a baby still have not been realized, and at times we are definitely feeling desperate and hopeless. God has been encouraging us lately through this struggle, but we still connected with the movie because of this as well.

As the movie closed, and Matt and I laughed at the cheesy ending, I couldn’t help but think about how many similarities we shared with the couple in the story. One glaring difference was clear though, and that is why I blog to you today. They prayed – we don’t.

We love God. We serve Him with our life and our vocations. We praise Him when things go well. We have never been good about praying together when we have trouble.

I just finished reading “The Shack” (AWESOME book – I’m sure I’ll blog about it soon), and in this book there is a lot of talk about sin and free will and God’s plan for creation. It became clear to me through this book that we sin because we ultimately want independence from God. Isn’t that just like us? Don’t we, as children, decide that we don’t have to listen to our parents, so we do our own thing? Don’t we get ourselves into trouble that way? Oy vey…what a predicament.

God desperately wants to be in relationship with us. He wants us to talk to him about our life, to consult him when there are decisions to be made. He wants to guide us, and he wants to help us become exactly what he intended us to be in the first place – dependent on him.

I don’t know what our future holds. It’s not really my business anyway. We may slay these giants, and we may not. Regardless of the outcome, it sure is nice to know that God is on our side, guiding us through the battle. Thank you Jesus…